For many years the end of the spring semester featured "Senior Week," which finished with commencement. A popular event during the week was the "Daisy Chain" processional. A typical such event started with the seniors having a class lunch, held for many years in the First Baptist Church on Main Street, and in latter years in the Roxbury Inn, also on Main Street. Following the lunch the seniors, in their caps and gowns, would parade from Main Street to the campus, led by a group of 12 sophmore women elected to the honor, wearing gowns and carrying the daisy chains. This procession sprang from the concept of a "moving up" day, as the freshman became sophmores and so forth.The daisy chain processional seems to have started at Brockport in the late 1920s, and ran up into the early 1960s, at which time a growing class size and changing attitudes saw the tradition end. The photo here is from the late 1950s, from slides in the Peg Hare Browne collection. Peg was a Brockport grad ('44) and then a campus school teacher for many years.
While the daisy chain died out here, it is still done at some colleges - perhaps something to revive at Brockport? :-)
1 comment: